Okay fuck it lets play Resident Evil 2 - but the remake this time. I’ve had it sitting on my shelf since I bought the PS4 pro a couple of years ago and, seriously, I’m not immune to being swept up in Resident Evil fever - let’s see how this Leon Kennedy business starts. I’ve got RE9: Requiem on that shelf now too, so since we played Resident Evil 4, I might as well round out the Leon saga, despite being out of order.

I’m about 5 or 6 hours into this game - through the entire police department and out through parking garage with the help of Ada Wong! The police station segment I really enjoyed right up until Mr. X shows up. I’ve got a confession… I hate Mr. X! I think he sucks and it grinds the pace of the game to a halt. When he first shows up in the police station - after you fall down a crumbling ladder in front of a burning helicopter - he comes out of nowhere! His entrance is pretty cool with him throwing that helicopter away like it was nothing but up until this point we don’t really know this guy is stalking us, we just know that he enjoys smashing the skulls of nosey reporters. That’s all well and good but there isn’t really a way to escape this guy. The only thing you can do is find a random room he cannot enter and wait… and wait… and wait some more. I kind of understand what they were trying to do, up until this point in the game we’ve had three enemies; the regular zombie, the licker and the mutated doberman.

The regular zombies take so many shots to kill that it becomes worth the risk to try to run around them. There isn’t a dodge or any kind of side-step that it feels like a risk to do with the zombies but a necessity with Mr. X. I wish there was something more to do with him like hiding in lockers or boxes or crawling into spaces. This feels like it was lifted straight from the original game, now with a fresh coat of paint and if thats the case, I should have played the original because then I could see exactly what the original intent was.

But even with this complaint I’ve really enjoyed the puzzles and atmosphere so far. When I first walked into that police station I said “What the hell is this, why is a police station going to have weird medallions and crazy keys” and then boom you get hit with the fact that the police station used to be a weird creepy art museum. That’s brilliant. I’m constantly thinking “was this in the original” so I think I’m going to have to put on my big boy pants and try it out. I really want to know if Ada’s section is in the original game because her weird infrared hacking mechanic is my least favorite part about this game so far. Its a slow, methodical thing that needs to be done and surprise when being stalked by Mr. X there’s nothing that can be done. So in the entirety of the game up until now I’ve died once (from that first Mr. X appearance) and now with Ada you can add on another 3.

Tonight we made it out of the sewers via a funicular. What a scandalous tram ride that was - I can’t believe Ada kissed Leon! They’ll make a much more attractive couple in RE4 but its still cute for now. I’m excited to be out of the sewers and into the very cool futuristic Umbrella facility, NEST - I love this kind of level design. I’m excited to see this play out. I feel like we’re in the final stretch but then we get to do it again as Claire! I’m interested if that’s going to be a rehashing of what we’ve already done or if she has entirely new areas to explore.